


Days Like Crazy Paving

by templeremus



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Episode: s06e08 Let's Kill Hitler, Introspection, Mels does not behave herself, Non-Graphic Violence, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-08 12:34:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21476089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/templeremus/pseuds/templeremus
Summary: Melody Pond is a superhero. Spoilers for episode 6.08, 'Let's Kill Hitler'. Also, cameo from a character who only gets one fleeting mention in 'The Girl Who Waited', because I am nerdy like that.
Kudos: 6





	Days Like Crazy Paving

The year before they all left school, Mels broke Kate Hayler's nose.

It wasn't part of the plan - the one that Mels had been working on, embellishing, since she first blazed into life in New York - but it felt good. Two of Kate's acolytes (_flunkies_ was a better word for them, really) had pinned Mels against a fire door the moment Kate buckled. She could have seen them both off, she told herself later: she was angry enough, the kind of hot shimmering rage that she had been taught to harness in her first childhood and that now blew up on rare occasions, like a solar storm. But Kate Hayler had a loud and especially piercing yell, and so the fight broke up less than a minute after it started, descending into a confusion of hands and uniforms that ended, at last, in Mels being frogmarched to the headmaster.

She didn't tell him what Kate had been saying about her mother. One of the arts to staying hidden, she had learnt early on, was knowing how much information to give out, and to whom. The truths she'd never admitted and the lies she'd told wound themselves into knots inside her head, like beads on a string. She was trapped, and she was free, and both those things would always be true, for as long as she and the Doctor lived.

Mels tried not to think about what might come after. Imagining it was like trying to picture eternity, vast and terrible all at once. She looked at her shoes, dotted in places with Kate's blood, and let the headmaster's bored, thin voice pass through her into the hallway beyond.

It was just her father waiting by the office door that day. He was starting to resemble the man she knew from Madame Kovarian's files, though the adolescent gawkiness had yet to fade. His latest haircut wasn't doing him any favours; Amy had been on about it all weekend, never catching the look of hurt on his face each time she brought it up. Now he turned as soon as Mels emerged and began walking, dragging his feet until she drew level with him. She felt glad - and then a little ashamed - that she had him to herself. Amy would have dived straight into one of her lectures - the impassioned kind that she reserved for people she actually cared about. Rory preferred to let things rest, at least until they could talk in private. They had made it halfway down the road before he spoke, keeping his voice low and his gaze fixed determinedly on the nearest lampost.

"Amy told me. Who it was," he said. And then, quieter still: "Well done."

Mels was suspended for a week. Normally these days felt blank, like the gap between the minutes on a clock face - just part of the long crawl until the inevitable happened and her pre-rehearsed fate slotted back into place. This time, she walked on air. On Friday afternoon she took advantage of Sharon's ritual shopping trip and stole a bag of groceries from the car. The bottles inside clinked. Mels toasted herself, alone in the garden shed where the Doctor had landed, years ago, and begun it all.

One day she would end it, and the knotted spider-web pattern of her life would be complete. Until then, she waited.


End file.
